The present invention relates to a method for managing information generated by a computer system and a software program serving as information for generating information by a computer system and a recording medium.
In accordance with the advancement of recent computer arts, a lot of various digitized pieces of information has circulated through electronic networks. Conventionally, a software program (hereafter referred to as authoring program) for processing file data (hereafter referred to as contents) serving as information unit to be processed by a computer system is installed from a recording medium such as a CD-ROM or a flexible disk or down-loaded on-line through a network, and captured by the computer system, and then each of the contents is processed by the program.
In the above state, management of authoring programs and contents such as assuring of copyright, preventing of alteration, or maintaining of security requires a technique basically different from conventional prevention of copying of paper-based information printed on paper or storage of data in a lockable place. Contents have been enciphered so far for security. However, enciphering of contents is not generalized yet and therefore, it can be hardly said that this is popular.
By making it possible to securely perform the above-described enciphering of contents, information management at each user level may be possible to a certain extent. However, processing of enciphering and operation for decoding are troublesome for each user. Moreover, to make the above mentioned widely circulate through the society, universal enciphering algorithm is necessary. However, to meet the necessity, the enciphering algorithm must be opened to the public. Therefore, this causes various problems.
The present invention is made to solve the above problems and its object is to provide an information management method and a recording medium making it possible to identify each authoring program and contents by providing unique ID for each authoring program and contents.